In this article on imediaconnection.com, Lance Loveday weighs in on the tools currently available for landing page testing, and why companies aren’t making more use of them to increase conversion rates and business results.

Article Highlights:

• Advertisers often spend countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars only to direct traffic to a sub-par landing page
• Landing page testing leverages technology to test various design combinations in order to find the best recipe for success
• These platforms are not easily interchangeable and have different capabilities that might or might not be in line with your marketing philosophy

Read the full article here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/27475.asp

In this video interview, conversion expert Lance Loveday explains the pros and cons of simple A/B split-testing vs. the much more complex multivariate testing:

We’ve found, says, Loveday, that A/B testing tends to deliver the largest gain. Of course, he adds, that this could be A/B/C/D testing - 4 variations of a single factor -as opposed to testing a large number of different factors at one time.

The advantage of A/B testing is that it tends to cause you to rethink the entire user experience as you look for elements to test — layout, visual hierarchy, messaging, etc. Multivariate testing, on the other hand, often leads to testing smaller incremental variations that don’t make as much difference. A/B testing forces you to be more creative about what you’re testing.

Loveday explains that his firm’s process is to start with some A/B testing to find an effective layout for a client. Once that’s established, they’ll do multivariate testing to get some additional incremental gains.

See the original full post here, on Web Marketing today >

In this video interview by Web Marketing Today, conversion and design expert Lance Loveday discusses why it’s important to test non-landing pages.

Historically, he says, the first emphasis was on optimizing clicks to the site using SEO and paid search. The next emphasis was on optimizing landing pages to get the click-through. But there are other points at which a site can profit by optimizing. E-commerce sites, for example, should optimize the check-out process, since some customers leave before completing the checkout.

See the full interview here:

[Interview and Article by Kevin Newcomb, Editor, Internet Marketing Institute]

Many companies spend tens of thousands of dollars to acquire customers, but ignore what happens next. Paying attention to your landing pages — whether it’s for pay-per-click (PPC) ads, email campaigns, or banner ads — is one of the most-neglected online marketing tactics. But creating custom landing pages, then testing and optimizing them, holds a lot of potential for increasing conversions, and therefore revenue.

“People don’t fundamentally believe that conversion optimization will work. If they did, they’d jump all over it,” said Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing and co-author of Web Design for ROI. “The truth is, it can have a game-changing impact on revenue and profitability.”

Most marketers have heard the buzz around landing page optimization (LPO), a part of the larger discipline of conversion optimization. Many marketers have also heard hyped-up claims of two- or three-fold jumps in conversions, and are not convinced that small changes can have a big impact on their conversion rates.

While those kinds of returns are possible, in extreme circumstances, such drastic increases are not necessary to make conversion optimization worthwhile, Loveday said.

[... Read the complete interview on PPCSummit.com > ]

We all want to find a change that will turn a lackluster landing page into a monster. Will it require a bigger button? Or perhaps a different image?

Find out how to pick the right tests to improve your landing pages from an expert with years of experience. See why the most obvious test is not always the best to try.

“People are looking for easy answers, and the answers, unfortunately, are not easy,” says Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing.

Loveday’s team has utilized a data-driven approach to landing page tests for as long as modern A/B testing software has been available. Below, we outline the steps he suggests for planning tests that can improve a page’s performance.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE on MarketingSherpa.com >